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This study aims to evaluate differences between substance dependent men who were arrested for intimate partner violence (IPV) with and without concurrent psychiatric problems.

In total, 63 participants were randomly assigned to manual‐guided group behavioral therapies (cognitive behavioral therapy for substance dependent domestic violence offenders (SADV) or drug counseling (DC)) and assessed across 12 weeks of treatment.

Despite excluding psychotic disorders and bipolar disorders at baseline, 23 percent of clients reported prior mental health treatment. SADV participants with co‐occurring mental health were different than SADV participants without co‐occurring mental health symptoms on both baseline and post‐treatment time periods. SADV participants with co‐occurring mental health symptoms had more pre‐treatment impairments, more drug use during treatment, a trend for more problems with aggressive behaviors throughout treatment and significantly more impairments in anger control subscales at post treatment compared to SADV participants without co‐occurring mental health symptoms.

The findings suggest the need to target and treat co‐occurring psychiatric symptoms and distress among SADV offenders. Perhaps offering clients targeted behavioral or pharmacotherapy adjunctive treatments can help improve treatment outcomes among substance dependent offenders of IPV when mental health problems are present.

This study is one of the first to evaluate differences between substance dependent men arrested for IPV with and without concurrent psychiatric problems. It shows that men who are violent toward their partners tend to have a co‐occurring problem with addiction, yet little is known about differences between substance dependent male offenders who have dual mental health problems.

Integrated care approaches have been recommended for co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. The purpose of this study is to explore and map the research literature regarding social work and its intersection with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders.

An iterative and systematic search of five electronic databases CINAHL, Scopus, PsycINFO, Social Science Database and Medline was conducted to identify studies published between 2002 and 2022. Two reviewers independently screened publications in two successive stages of title and abstract screening, followed by a full-text screening of eligible studies. Data from each included publication were screened and extracted using Covidence.

A total of 38 eligible studies were included in the final scoping review. The included studies were conducted in eight different counties, including a range of study designs (e.g. cross-sectional, RCT, pilot studies). Only 8 of the 38 studies included people with co-occurring disorders as participants. Study settings were broad, for example, dual-diagnosis, military, homeless, substance use and community-based settings.

A review of the literature surrounding social work practice and its intersection with co-occurring mental health and Alcohol and other drug was warranted to document the evidence on this largely unexplored area of research. This review found that there was a paucity of literature that focused specifically on the role of social work practice in relation to individuals with co-occurring disorders, with a limited number of studies focusing on dual diagnoses.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the success of an initiative involving the transformation of a group of small substance use treatment only or mental health treatment only provider agencies serving uninsured adults into providers of co-occurring disorder treatment.

The paper uses a case study narrative to describe the initiative and the transformation of the participant agencies from being providers of mental health or substance use treatment to providers of co-occurring disorders.

Six agencies serving uninsured adults expanded their scope of patient treatment services to include the capacity to treat adults with co-occurring disorders. This was achieved with modest support funding from a local foundation. The initiative has been ongoing for five years.

The outcome of this initiative demonstrates the financial and practical feasibility of improving and expanding treatment services to low-resourced patient populations. The participating agencies were able to improve their capacity to treat patients with substance use or mental health issues that previously they were not prepared to treat and thus increased their ability to provide integrated care.

The initiative described here shows that the treatment of concomitant substance use and mental health disorders is within the range of many small-scale treatment providers, if provided the leadership and support. Delivery of effective treatments to populations experiencing co-occurring disorders that are underserved and undertreated are achievable in community-based clinical practices. This has implications for developing treatment capacity outside of hospital settings to enable treatment of co-occurring disorders to become more accessible.

There is a paucity of comparative literature on pathway to care among patients with co-occurring disorders and those with only substance use disorders. This paper aims to compare the pathways to care among patients with co-occurring disorder and those with only substance use disorders.

A cross-sectional observational study was carried out on male treatment seekers at a tertiary care substance use disorder treatment center in India. Participants were recruited in two groups, those with co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders and those with only substance use disorders. The two groups were matched for age and socio-economic status.

A total of 189 subjects with co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders and 197 subjects with substance use disorders only were recruited. Psychiatric services were the most common first point of care. However, a larger proportion of the subjects in the co-occurring disorder group received the first care from faith healers, while a greater proportion received first care from the therapeutic communities in substance use disorder only group. Initial care was sought mostly following suggestion from the family members in both the groups. The time to treatment for substance use disorders did not differ between the two groups, though the treatment seeking for substance use disorder was more delayed than that of psychiatric disorder in the co-occurring disorder group.

The findings shed light on the pathway of care followed in India and is a matter of further research.

Expansion of services and dissemination of information about psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders can provide timely care to patients with substance use disorders and co-occurring disorders.

The findings have a social implication as well. More awareness is needed currently in India for timely treatment of dual disorders.

The paper is an original research by the authors. The data were collected from the participants who reported to the dual diagnosis clinic. The findings are important as they tell us about the current understanding of dual diagnosis by the general public.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe first-person experiences of relational recovery in co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions.

Within a phenomenological and collaborative approach, in-depth individual interviews with eight persons with co-occurring conditions were analysed using systematic text condensation.

Participants described interpersonal relationships as both supporting and hindering recovery in fundamental ways. Four categories of experiences of relational recovery were described as follows: choosing one’s child; living with loneliness and a painful past; sacrificing everything for one’s partner; and regaining trust and support.

This paper provides an enhanced understanding of how interpersonal relationships may be experienced by persons who live with co-occurring conditions. The results generally support an understanding of recovery as a relational process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe experiences of recovery among people with co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions (co-occurring conditions) in a rural community in Norway.

In-depth individual interviews with eight persons with co-occurring conditions were conducted, audiotaped, transcribed and analysed using a phenomenological approach. This study is part of a research project investigating recovery orientation of services in a Norwegian district.

The analysis yielded four dimensions of recovery: feeling useful and accepted; coming to love oneself; mastering life; and emerging as a person. Insecure and inadequate housing and limited solutions to financial problems were described as major obstacles to recovery.

Further research into the facilitation of recovery as defined by persons with concurrent disorders is needed, particularly regarding the facilitation of community participation.

This study supports an increased focus on societal and community factors in promoting recovery for persons with co-occurring conditions, as well as service designs that allow for an integration of social services and health care, and for collaboration among services.

The results suggest that the community can aid recovery by accepting persons with co-occurring conditions as fellow citizens and welcoming their contributions.

The paper provides an enhanced understanding of how persons with co-occurring conditions may experience recovery.

This study aims to explore and describe staff working in a Norwegian supportive housing site’s experiences with promoting social community participation for residents with co-occurring problems. The research question addressed was: how does residential support staff experience promoting social community participation for residents with co-occurring problems?

Nine residential support staff participated in qualitative interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were analysed using Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis.

The analysis process resulted in two themes: “It is all about economics” and “Who will pay for it?”

Regarding the Nordic welfare system, the need for a redistribution of financial resources in health services is discussed. The authors recommend that further studies explore people outside the regular health-care system perspectives on how they can contribute to making community inclusion a reality for persons experiencing co-occurring problems.

This study provides a nuanced understanding of how financial resources can impede or support efforts and opportunities to promote community inclusion for residents experiencing co-occurring problems.

Integrated care is widely supported as a means of improving treatment outcomes for people with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Over the past two decades, Australian state and federal governments have identified integrated care as a policy priority and invested in a number of research and capacity building initiatives. This study aims to examine Australian research evaluating the effectiveness of integrated treatment approaches to provide insight into implications for future research and practice in integrated treatment.

This narrative review examines Australian research evaluating empirical evidence of the effectiveness of integrated treatment approaches within specific populations and evidence from initiatives aimed at integrating care at the service or system level.

Research conducted within the Australian context provides considerable evidence to support the effectiveness of integrated approaches to treatment, particularly for people with high prevalence co-occurring disorders or symptoms of these (i.e. anxiety and depression). These have been delivered through various modalities (including online and telephone-based services) to improve health outcomes in a range of populations. However, there is less evidence regarding the effectiveness of specific models or systems of integrated care, including for more severe mental disorders. Despite ongoing efforts on behalf of the Australian government, attempts to sustain system-level initiatives have remained hampered by structural barriers.

Effective integrated interventions can be delivered by trained clinicians without requiring integration at an organisational or structural level. While there is still considerable work to be done in terms of building sustainable models at a system level, this evidence provides a potential foundation for the development of integrated care models that can be delivered as part of routine practice.

The purpose of this paper is to review the research on the use of technology in mental health and addiction treatment, focusing on the use of technology-assisted treatment. Although initial research investigating technology-assisted treatment for substance use has demonstrated promising results, this paper highlights the need for treatment to address co-occurring substance use and intimate partner violence (IPV). This paper defines the benefits associated with the use of behavioral health avatar coaches in mental health treatment targeting substance use and IPV as well as providing preliminary research results regarding the use of avatar coaches in clinical settings.

A literature review of the research relating to the use of technology in mental health and addiction treatment is provided. Additionally, a preliminary study aimed to develop an interactive therapy platform that utilizes virtual avatars as therapy coaches to help clients with substance abuse and IPV is presented. In this preliminary study, male participants were shown videos of various technology-based coaches matched on length, gestures and content. Researchers investigated whether patients preferred a virtual reality health coach, a cartoon health coach or a human health coach; as well as patient satisfaction and preference between two versions of the avatar.

A review of the relevant literature suggests that a majority of research has focused on using technology to replace face-to-face therapy with little research focusing on technology-assisted or augmented mental health and addiction treatment. Although initial research investigating avatar-assisted treatment for substance use has demonstrated promising results, research suggests a high prevalence of co-occurring substance use and IPV, suggesting the need for treatment to address co-occurring substance use and IPV. A preliminary research study was conducted to obtain patient feedback for personalizing avatar development into behavioral health interventions that target addiction and IPV.

Although results of the preliminary study combined with previous research on avatar-assisted treatment for substance use has demonstrated promising results, theory-based research needs to be expanded to focus on randomized controlled trials of avatar-assisted treatment for co-occurring substance use and IPV.

This paper provides an overview of the use of technology-assisted treatment for co-occurring substance use and IPV. The preliminary results regarding patient satisfaction led to the development of additional avatars for use in interactive therapy.

This paper is one of the first to explore the use of avatar-assisted treatment for male offenders with co-morbid substance use and IPV.

Although acknowledged as a principal dimension in the context of text mining, time has yet to be formally incorporated into the process of visually representing the relationships between keywords in a knowledge domain. This paper aims to develop and validate the feasibility of adding temporal knowledge to a concept map via pair-wise temporal analysis (PTA).

The paper presents a temporal trend detection algorithm – vector space model – designed to use objective quantitative pair-wise temporal operators to automatically detect co-occurring hot concepts. This PTA approach is demonstrated and validated without loss of generality for a spectrum of information technologies.

The rigorous validation study shows that the resulting temporal assessments are highly correlated with subjective assessments of experts (n = 136), exhibiting substantial reliability-of-agreement measures and average predictive validity above 85 per cent.

Using massive amounts of textual documents available on the Web to first generate a concept map and then add temporal knowledge, the contribution of this work is emphasized and magnified against the current growing attention to big data analytics.

This paper proposes a novel knowledge discovery method to improve a text-based concept map (i.e. semantic graph) via detection and representation of temporal relationships. The originality and value of the proposed method is highlighted in comparison to other knowledge discovery methods.